


The November Guests

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-12
Updated: 2007-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jerry Panowski has a problem, and only John and Dean Winchester can help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Big thank yous to [](http://luzdeestrellas.livejournal.com/profile)[**luzdeestrellas**](http://luzdeestrellas.livejournal.com/) and [](http://iamstealthyone.livejournal.com/profile)[**iamstealthyone**](http://iamstealthyone.livejournal.com/) for their suggestions, hand-holding, comma-wrangling, and beta reading above and beyond the call. And I'm really grateful for my cheering section: [](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/profile)[**innie_darling**](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/) (who kept this on track), [](http://marinarusalka.livejournal.com/profile)[**marinarusalka**](http://marinarusalka.livejournal.com/) (who persuaded me to the long fic side of the force), [](http://offbalance.livejournal.com/profile)[**offbalance**](http://offbalance.livejournal.com/) (who rocks the insight) and [](http://batyatoon.livejournal.com/profile)[**batyatoon**](http://batyatoon.livejournal.com/) (who listened to me describe the first scene of this in detail about a year ago). More author notes/website citations at the end.

Jerry was having a bad day.

His kid hanging up on him, that was rotten on many levels; the transmission in his car needing life support, that wasn't so hot either. However, his kitchen table spinning in midair -- well, that was beyond what any reasonable man could be expected to endure.

Coffee spread in a dark brown pool on the floor, mixed with the spilled sugar. The chairs had tipped over, legs stuck in the air at a slant, as if they'd had it up to here with the whole situation.

And his kitchen table was spinning. In mid-air. Also, it was raining. Rain was particularly depressing in November.

Jerry crouched just inside the door of his newly renovated kitchen, careful of his broken arm in the sling. It was sickening to acknowledge that his ex-wife had been right: buying a run-down, 19th century farmhouse and fixing it up had been his dumbest idea ever.

The house was far from the road, with woods and a stream bordering the back edge of his lawn. It needed all kinds of work: shoring up walls, applying fresh paint, fixing the roof, replacing the septic tank. All that was nothing compared to the truckload of more unusual problems the place had.

The kitchen table continued to spin, and with his good hand, he pulled out his cell phone, wondering who he should call. The fire department? The police?

Jerry tucked his cast-covered arm closer to his body. When the pounding started, for a split second he flinched, sure it was a sign of something unspeakable coming for him. Then he realized it was someone knocking on his front door, a perfectly ordinary noise.

 _Go away,_ he thought.

The pounding continued. Jerry got up out of his crouch and went down the hall, past his completed living room, which had only a few pieces of furniture, all too nice to put his feet on.

He opened the front door a crack. Two guys in gas-company uniforms stood on his front porch. One of them was older, tall and broad in a way that could put a quarterback to shame, face covered with a dark beard. The younger guy was shorter and clean-shaven, his hair cropped in an almost military way. He looked like he was in his early twenties and carried himself with the kind of confidence and good looks you'd expect from movie stars, not gas company men.

"Mr. Panowski?" The Kid said politely, with a movie-star grin to match the confidence. "I'm afraid there's a problem with your place; we need to come in and check it out."

"Gas meter's around the back."

"We need to come in, sir." The Kid shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and Jerry got a glimpse of the duffel bag over his shoulder.

That struck Jerry as wrong, right off; why would a gas-company man need to carry a duffel bag? "Why?"

"We suspect a gas leak," Big Guy said, with a voice comforting as a thundercloud.

The Kid spoke fast. "Major gas leak, very dangerous. We might have to evacuate you."

Next to him, Big Guy looked as if he'd forgotten what muscles to use to smile, but would try if he had to.

"Like I said, gas meter's at the back of the house." Jerry started to close the door.

Big Guy's hand shot out and clamped over the edge of the door frame. "Sorry, sir, we're going to have to insist."

Before Jerry could reply, the man had pushed his way past Jerry and into his home, The Kid on his heels.

"Hey!" Jerry used his best don't-mess-with-me-I'm-the-boss work voice. "This is my home, and unless you want me to call the police on your ass you'd better --"

But they were already at the kitchen door, standing shoulder to shoulder as they watched the spinning table.

"Cool," The Kid said, without a hint of shock in his voice, as if kitchen tables that spun in midair were commonplace, something he saw every damn day and still thought was great in the way that ice-cold one-dollar drafts, or shooting stars, were great. He handed the duffel bag to Big Guy.

"That's one word for it," Jerry muttered.

Big Guy had the bag open and was pulling out a heavy-duty ziplock bag containing rock salt. At least Jerry thought it was rock salt. It could have been anything.

Jerry started to dial 9-1-1.

"Wait." The Kid held up his hand, palm flat. "Please." He bit the syllable out sharp, more pleading than imperious, and Jerry's finger hovered over the "1."

Meanwhile, Big Guy had pulled a few more items out of the duffel bag. They looked just like potpourri sachets, only plainer than the crap you could buy in card stores and New Agey-type places, ordinary cloth bags tied with brown twine. He tossed two to The Kid, who caught them with casual ease and moved towards the corner of the kitchen.

Then Big Guy, bag still in his hand, pulled something else out of the duffel. Jerry fumbled back against the wall at the sight of the shotgun, his back hitting the corkboard he'd hung next to the pantry door. "Oh, hey. Hey, look. I don't have anything val--"

"We're not going to rob you," Big Guy said. "Gun's not for you, all right?" He gestured with the barrel towards the table. "It's for whatever's causing that."

"Sure. Anything you say, buddy." Jerry said acidly, and kept his finger on the cell phone keypad.

"Dude," said The Kid. "Cut us some slack. Your kitchen table is spinning in mid-air. We're here to help." He put one of the packets down at the back of the counter, in the south corner, while Big Guy placed his sachets in the north and east corners of the room.

The Kid put his last sachet down in the west. That was the last one. With a clatter, the table dropped to the linoleum. Jerry slumped as Big Guy opened the ziplock bag and walked in a circle around the kitchen table, sprinkling salt as he went. The overturned chairs started to shake, harsh rattles against the floor; the two men hardly blinked, just exchanged glances and kept on with...whatever they were doing.

 _Bad day_ was no longer an adequate word. _Unbelievably bizarre day_ , that was better. Jerry slid down to the floor and crawled back over to his spot in the doorway; he'd read somewhere that's where you should be during an earthquake (and what happened to earthquakes not being common in Pennsylvania?). It took him a moment to realize that only the chairs were shaking but not the floor, or the walls, and that Big Guy had finished his circuit around the table and had started chanting.

Evidently, the crazy people had decided to pay him a visit, and they weren't very polite.

The Kid went to stand near him, producing a handgun from somewhere under his uniform, and Jerry put his palm to his face, then lowered his hand and curled it into a fist.

 _Hail Mary, full of grace..._ Jerry started reciting in his head, and the internal rhythms of his own prayer merged with the cadence of Big Guy's voice as he intoned whatever freakish ritual he was doing. Jerry didn't recognize the chant as anything he'd heard back at St. Katherine's. But it was definitely Latin.

Jerry glanced at The Kid, who held the gun raised, waiting.

Big Guy finished his Latin recitation and the chairs stopped trembling, going as still as if they'd never done anything odd ever, except for being tipped upside down.

"Is that it?" The Kid lowered his gun, gripping it in both hands, turning to look around the kitchen.

"For now." Big Guy wiped the sleeve of his blue coveralls across his forehead.

"Place does have a history. I'm surprised we never heard about shit going down here sooner." The Kid went to the window over the newly installed sink with its fresh-gleaming metal and let go of the gun with one hand to twitch aside the curtain. He peered out over Jerry's back lawn.

"Excuse me..." Jerry pushed himself up off the floor.

"We don't have all the gear we need," Big Guy said, putting the shotgun away. "I'll have to call Caleb; he can hook us up with a local dealer."

"Hey..." Jerry tried again.

Big Guy went on as if Jerry wasn't even there. "And we'd better do a smudge, burn the cloves--"

Jerry put his fingers to his mouth and let out the sharp whistle he often found useful at work. Big Guy turned towards him with the kind of slowness that masked irritation, while The Kid's eyebrows went up.

"You made my kitchen table stop spinning in midair, which I'm grateful for," Jerry said. "But you need to tell me who the _fuck_ you are and what you're doing in _my house!_ " That ended on a yell. He could already visualize the digital readout on the BP monitor spiking, the frown on his doctor's face.

After a moment or two, Big Guy held out his hand. "John Harrison."

Jerry hesitated, then took it. It was true what they said about a person's handshake. You could tell a lot of things. John Harrison's grasp was dry, the fingers rough; he could probably break Jerry's hand if he wanted to. "And this is my son, Dean."

"Hey, man." Dean stuck out his hand. His shook hands like his father, only he grabbed on tighter and let go quicker. "Didn't mean to ignore you, we get kind of into the work." He shrugged.

"What kind of work?" Jerry thought he might try to throttle them both if they didn't start giving him information right now, only he couldn't take them, no way, so throttling them, or knocking their heads together, probably wasn't an option. Maybe he should yell at them again. "Why was my table spinning?"

"Your house is haunted," said John.

"Haunted?" Wow, his voice hadn't squeaked like that for thirty years.

"Yep." Dean shoved his hands into his pockets. "You have a spirit of some kind. More than one, we think."

"You mean ghosts?" He wanted to make sure he understood this, and wanted to make sure he understood them.

"Yeah, you know, 'wooooooo, scary, they're heeeeeere,' that kind of thing?" Dean went to work picking up the overturned chairs, setting them back into their places one by one.

John ran a large hand along the fresh, unvarnished, pale wood of the doorframe. "When did you start renovations?"

"About two months ago." He watched as Dean straightened the tablecloth and began picking up the fallen salt and pepper shakers, napkin holder, the various bills he'd left on the table in a pile. There were a lot of bills and it was taking Dean a while to find them all.

"You want some coffee?" Jerry said. He might as well offer; there had to be some explanation for why his kitchen table had spun around, and for all the other things that had happened, and at the moment, the Harrisons were his only option. "Have a seat." He gestured with his good hand at the now neat-as-a-pin table. Dean worked fast, focused. Jerry wished he had more people like him on his team at work.

They sat opposite each other. and Dean began to fidget with the pepper grinder. John kept his hands away from the tablecloth, as if he was afraid to mess it up. They both slumped a little, losing some of the tense, battle-ready look they'd had five minutes ago before the chairs had stopped shaking.

"Dad." Dean put down the pepper grinder. "Shouldn't we do the cloves..."

"Yeah. You take care of it, son."

"How do you take your coffee?" Jerry asked.

Dean shoved back his chair. "Black, one sugar, please," he said, and walked out of the kitchen.

"Cloves?" Jerry didn't like the sound of that. Were they going to stink up his place with some weird New-Agey crap?

"Protection and purification," John said. "Might give us a little breathing room to regroup, while Dean and I check out what's what." When Jerry gestured at him with a coffee mug, he said, "Black, no sugar."

Figured.

Things got real quiet with Dean absent. Harrison finally relaxed about a millimeter further and tapped his fingers on the tablecloth while the coffeemaker dripped and gurgled to itself. By the time Dean came back in, the smell of coffee filled the kitchen.

Before he sat down in front of his steaming mug, Dean put a little pile of cloves on a small silver dish, one of the items he'd pulled from the battered shoebox he'd brought in with him, and set it on the counter. He lit the dried buds, and the strong, smoky-sweet smell mingled with the gentler, darker scent of the coffee.

Jerry dumped about six packets of sugar and a lot of milk into his mug. He caught Dean watching him do it, an indescribable expression on his face. "So what line of work are you two in, anyway?"

"Ghostbusting," Dean said, taking a swallow of coffee.

"Like the movie?"

"Who ya gonna call..." Dean smirked, and his father sighed, his eyes going heavenward; clearly, he'd heard that joke one too many times.

This wasn't how Jerry had expected his day to unfold. When his alarm had woken him up this morning, he'd expected to do some work on the place himself, pay a few bills, watch the game. In no part of his planning were there real-life ghostbusters.

Or his kitchen table spinning in midair, for that matter. So maybe John and Dean Harrison pushing their way into his home on this damp Saturday afternoon was just as well.

* * *

Dean swept the EMF over the room where Mr. Panowski kept his books and his stereo system. The meter squealed a little as it went over the CD player and receiver. Otherwise, not a blip.

The half-finished state of Mr. Panowski's home was a comfort, in a way. Dean would feel less bad if they had to rip it apart battling whatever had possessed it. The sections that were finished were pretty decent. Like this den, with its built-in bookshelves, large TV, and the kind of furniture Dean never felt worried about getting mud on. Dean put the EMF meter down on the bookshelf ledge and pulled out a book on forensics. He flipped through the pages, reading a sentence here and there. The books were shiny and new, mostly nonfiction, topics from aeronautics to engineering, about things you could actually work on with your hands, rather than ideas.

Dean snapped the book shut and replaced it. No time for reading; he had to finish his sweep.

Sam would be all over those books, though--

Nope. He wasn't going to do that. He'd promised himself he wasn't going to do that. It'd been two and a half months since Sam had left (seventy-five days, but he wasn't counting) and it still didn't feel right.

He took another silver dish and more herbs out of his bag, and arranged the burn on the scuffed oak coffee table. As the thin wisp of smoke rose into the air, Dean half-expected to hear a smart remark behind him in the quiet. Sam had always complained about the smell of the various herbs they burned in haunted houses, but Dean had stopped thinking about them years ago. The scents simply _were_ , along with maple syrup on pancakes or the exhaust of the Impala or a burnt match.

Something twitched in his peripheral vision, a flicker of shadow, of movement. Dean swept the EMF meter around and it squealed faintly. But when he passed it across the spot again, there was nothing.

Didn't mean there hadn't been anything there.

He moved back out into the hallway and found a large, half-finished room, the door standing open. Dean stepped inside, the floor gritty under his boots. The walls were stripped, revealing the original wood and brick beneath. A large window with a cracked pane, a spider dangling in the corner, gave him a rippled view of the lawn. Based on the fresh boards stacked near the wall, the sawhorse and other materials, this was where the contractors had last been working. A brick fireplace, hearth stained dark with old scorch marks, gaped empty.

The room smelled of dust and rotted wood. As Dean moved towards the brick fireplace, the EMF squealed again, practically jumping in his hand; or maybe his hand jumped. But as before, when he swept the meter from side to side, it didn't register anything abnormal.

The place felt dank and cold as a cellar, but that could be because of the lack of insulation, or the cold humidity of the day.

Yeah, right.

What it felt like was death, the inside of a mausoleum. Something real bad had gone down, and it had left traces -- not a ghost, not right at that moment...oh, hell, he didn't know. Sam knew all about that rooty-tooty fruity stuff. Place memory, was that what it was called? Maybe he should--

 _No. Stop doing that._ "Shit." The musty room swallowed his curse, made his voice sound small and hollow.

He knelt and set up another burn, not hurrying at all. Then he stood up and said, very softly, "Oh, yeah, you sonuvabitch. We're coming for you."

* * *

Back in the kitchen, Mr. Panowski was at the table alone, writing out checks, his cast-covered arm resting next to the stack of bills. "Oh, hi, Dean," he said, then glared down at the credit-card bill open at the top of the pile. "Figured I'd try to act normal as possible."

Dean hovered near the door, and eyed the fridge. For magnets, Mr. Panowski used the free ones local businesses gave out as advertisements. Among the flight schedules, articles from aeronautics magazines, and post-its that said things like "buy coffee ASAP," there were a handful of snapshots. One was of Mr. Panowski and a lanky, long-legged kid. The trees in the distance behind them were golden, and they were both smiling.

"You want something to eat? Help yourself." Mr. Panowski waved an impatient hand at the fridge. "There isn't much. Things have been completely bugnuts so I haven't gone shopping."

"Nah, I'm...well, maybe." Dean opened the fridge and found an expired carton of milk, half a package of processed cheese, two eggs nearly past the expiration date, grape jelly, butter, and a few bottles of beer. He thought of asking if he could have one, but Dad might snipe at him for drinking while they were on a job. The freezer had frozen mini bagel-pizzas. Score.

"Okay if I make some of these?"

"Huh?" Mr. Panowski glanced up from his bills. "Oh, sure, go ahead."

Dean popped the mini pizzas into the microwave, hit the buttons, and leaned against the counter to wait, ankles crossed, arms folded. "So, uh, Mr. Panowski..."

"Please, call me Jerry."

"Jerry. What's been going on here? Aside from the kitchen table."

"The night I broke my arm," he said, and lifted it awkwardly, turning in his chair to face Dean, "I was watching TV in my room, heard a crash from down here. I went to check it out, and all the lights started flickering, and when I got to the kitchen, the cabinet doors kind of just...snapped open. Knocked me flat on my ass. Gave me a hairline fracture." He touched the fingers of his good hand to his cast.

"Bet you didn't tell the police about the cabinet doors." If Dean were a cop, he sure wouldn't believe the crazy-assed stories people told. Half of the time they were high or delusional and half the time there was something going down for real, and that's why people needed him and Dad even if they didn't know it. Some of them barely mumbled a thank-you, they were in such a hurry to get them out of their houses.

Given that they usually left a big mess in their wake, Dean guessed he couldn't blame them, but a lot of the time the mess wasn't their fault; it was the critter they had to trap, kill, or banish that tore the place up. Sometimes the trapping, killing, or banishing involved some kind of structural alteration -- yeah, he liked that, structural alteration, sounded respectable -- to the place, or the thing put up enough of a fight that he and Dad had to shoot up or break the furniture fending it off.

"I told them I'd heard a noise," Jerry said. "That I thought someone had broken into the place, and that I'd tripped and fallen against a door." He paused, and his good hand curled into a fist against the table. "Hang on. How did you know I called the police?"

 _Crap._ How to explain that? Dean decided the truth might be best. "We listen to the police scanner when we're scouting a job."

"You've been watching my place?"

The microwave dinged. Dean grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table and put the mini pizzas on it, scorching his fingers. The cheese was bubbling hot. "We were out here for another haunting a few towns over, and heard folks talking in a diner. Some guy was talking about a construction job he had in Kittanning. He said he saw something terrible, so he quit. His buddies started telling him about your place, how it had a history. They didn't go into specifics."

"That'd be one of the carpenters." Jerry leaned his cast on the table. "He didn't say why, just stormed out in a big hurry last week. Not as if he was that good a worker to begin with; I kept catching him raiding my fridge and watching my TV."

Dean looked down at the mini pizza he'd been about to shove into his mouth, then at Jerry. "Well, anyway, we decided to check it out, started researching the place. Listening to the police scanner's pretty routine for us, we happened to catch your accident. Kind of confirmed it was someplace we needed to be." He shoved the mini pizza into his mouth as Dad walked into the kitchen.

"Got a few blips, nothing much," Dad said, carefully stepping over the salt circle, putting his gear and meter down on the table. He stopped when he saw Dean leaning against the counter. "Done already?"

"Yethir," Dean mumbled, his mouth full. He stopped leaning and swallowed, then repeated, clearly this time, "Yes, sir." He quickly finished the other mini pizzas and wiped his fingers using the napkin instead of rubbing his fingers on his jeans. "Smudged all the rooms. There's an unfinished room in the southwest corner that gave of a vibe. Maybe we should start there."

"We gotta go get the equipment first," Dad said. "I called Caleb while I did my sweep. He checked with his friend in East Franklin, said we should head on up." He looked over at Jerry, whose forehead creased with uncertainty as he listened to them. "You should go to a motel," Dad said, as blunt and flat as a cop suggesting Jerry might want to step out of the car.

"Look, that's not necessary," Jerry said, his voice hardening, still polite. "You go do what you need to do to get this..." He made a disgusted face. "...this _pest_ out of my house. I'll be fine."

Dean looked at Jerry with his broken arm. This wasn't a hunter, but a civilian under attack in his own home. Why did these people never get it? It would make their jobs so much easier. But oh no, they were either oblivious, _it's superstitious nonsense, it was the wind_ , or over-confident, _not going to let some spook drive me from my home, no way, buster._

"Mr. Panowski," Dean said. "I mean, Jerry--with all due respect, we don't know how bad this could get."

"Gets a lot worse after sunset." Dad shoved his hands in his pockets. "We try to protect people the best we can, but we can't make guarantees." He raised his head and fixed Jerry with the kind of stare that always reminded Dean that Dad had been a marine. "Trust me. You don't want to be here until after we kick this thing out of your home."

"Look, I appreciate what you're saying." Jerry's good hand curled into a fist. "I'm not an idiot."

"Didn't say you were," Dad said, and Dean could hear the temper unraveling in his voice. "But again, you should go to a motel."

The kitchen grew a lot less warm and cozy, and Dean moved, putting himself between Dad and Jerry.

Jerry didn't raise his voice, but it went flint-hard in a way that could almost match Dad. "You want me to pack up and go stay in some motel while you do God-knows-what to my house?"

"It's for your own safety."

"This is my home, Mr. Harrison." Jerry was on his feet now, and he might have lacked the Winchester height, but he was stocky, and looked as if he had a chance at shoving Dad out the front door, especially if Dad decided to try not to hurt him. Dean wondered if he'd still get to call him "Jerry" afterwards. "And I'm not leaving."

Right about now Sam would be turning to Jerry, all soft voice, pushing his too-long hair out of his eyes. _We understand how you feel. We'd feel the same way. We can't force you to go. But we're trying to protect you and save your home. Maybe you could go just for tonight; we'll check in tomorrow and see how things are going..._ Something like that, anyway, to make Jerry think he was still in charge of a situation that was about to tailspin off into territory he would wish had stayed in nightmares.

"We understand how you feel," Dean said, trying to make his voice low and comforting. "Maybe we could find a compromise." He glanced at Dad, who slid him a sideways, warning glance.

"Sounds fair," Jerry said, as if waiting for the catch.

"Fine," Dad said, clipped. "Dean, you go to East Franklin. I'll stay here with Jerry, start setting up with the equipment we already have."

No way was it a good idea to leave Dad and Jerry alone. Dad might forget they were supposed to protect the civilian, and wind up punching him instead. "Maybe I should..."

"We don't know what we're dealing with here yet," Dad said. Dean knew that tone. There'd be no arguing with him. "Best to let me hold down the fort. Oh, and tomorrow morning I want you back at the library. Take another shot at finding out where the bodies are buried, and see what else you can find out about this place."

That was typical; Dean wasn't strong enough to handle a poltergeist on his own, yet Dad layered on the tasks as if he were two people. So, okay, Dean could be two people if that's what was needed, because there was no Sam available right then to go do the geeky research thing.

"Yeah, sure," Dean said.

"Call Caleb on your cell, have him give you directions. Start by heading north on 268."

Dean started for the door. "Don't kill each other before I get back, okay?"

Jerry snickered. "Hey, I'll try not to be a pain in the ass, if your Dad will, too. What do you say, Harrison?"

"Dunno. Being a pain in the ass is kind of a habit," Dean heard Dad deadpan from the kitchen, and he felt some of the tension go out of his neck and shoulders. "Hey, Dean. Don't let him overcharge you," Dad called after him.

It was tempting to shout out something smartass, but Dean bit back the urge as he shut the door behind him. He'd been handling a lot of the negotiations since he was eighteen, for chrissake; what was Dad's problem? Ever since Sam had left...Yeah, but there was no point in thinking about that. At least things were better than they'd been earlier that month.

It had been the same melancholy silence that always hit Dad right before Halloween and stayed around awhile. Only this year, Dad had pulled in so deep, Dean had wondered if this would be the one when he withdrew and never came out. Overhearing the carpenter in that diner talk about Jerry's ghost had finally started to shake Dad free.

Gravel crunched under the thick treads of Dean's boots as he hiked along the long, twisting drive out to the road, where they'd left the Impala and the truck. In the short time they'd been inside, a few dead, brown leaves had already fallen onto the windshield. Dean picked them out.

The air smelled clean and damp; the rain was still a fine drizzle, little more than mist that tickled his cheeks and nose. Before he got in the car, he turned and eyed the house. It needed a new coat of paint, and it seemed to sag in spots, but it had a stone foundation. Solid, sad-looking, a nice house that had something bad happen in it, the way bad things happened to good people.

* * *

"That's some kid you got there," Jerry said, as Harrison tested a digital recorder and nibbled at a mini pizza.

"Yeah, he is." John looked up and the smile was warm, if fleeting. But it reached his eyes, changed his whole face; for a moment Jerry saw somebody he could imagine drinking beers with at the local pub. John brought the recorder up to his face. "Testing one two three." Then he hit a button and his voice played back, hollow in reproduction.

"What are you going to do with that?" Jerry's stomach growled and he began to think about what they'd do for dinner. He'd get pizza, except he'd been eating pizza five nights out of seven since Chris had left.

John put the recorder, which was the length of his palm, down on the tablecloth. "It's a pretty sensitive device, so it should pick up any EVP -- electronic voice phenomena. Ghost noises," he added gruffly. He didn't seem to enjoy having to explain this stuff.

"Sort of a black box for a haunting, huh?"

"What?"

"My line of work is airplanes. In every cockpit, there's a flight data recorder -- an FDR, and a cockpit voice recorder -- a CVR." Jerry grinned. "See, you aren't the only one with the weird acronyms. If a plane crashes, we can listen to the data and use it to figure out what happened. My guess is your EVP is kind of similar, if I'm understanding it right. It's the ghost leaving a recording of its last thoughts."

"Never thought of it that way." John reached down into the duffel at his feet and pulled out a thick leather notebook, bursting at the edges with clippings. It looked as if he'd had it a long, long time; maybe it was almost as old as Dean, given the soft look to the leather. "Where did most of the incidents happen? What part of the house?"

"Well, here, and the downstairs bathroom. Mostly, the unfinished room. That's where the carpenter was working when he lost his shit."

Opening the notebook to a fresh page, John pulled out a pen and began to scribble, with messy, quick strokes. "What did you see in the bathroom?"

"Wasn't me who saw it. It was my son, Chris. A face, in the mirror."

"You want to be a little more specific?" A hint of humor colored his voice. The pen stilled on the page and John rubbed two thick fingers across his bearded chin. "No one really enjoys talking about it," he said, humor gone, his voice weary. "It scares people so bad some of them are never the same again. Changes a person."

Jerry didn't want this. He was just an airplane manager from rural PA, with a broken arm and a mortgage. Despite the recent problems, he had a decent, comfortable life, good pals. Maybe someday he'd meet another woman as fascinating as Eileen. But whatever this was, it seemed to have chosen him, and whoever the hell this guy was, he and his son seemed to be the only two people who could get rid of it.

"Young, Chris told me. The skin was all pale...His face was bloody on one side and his lips were moving, as if he was trying to say something." _You calling me a liar, Dad?_ Jerry stood, scraping his chair back. "I need a drink. You want anything?"

"Not now."

Instead of heading for the fridge to get the beer, Jerry went over and knelt before one of the cabinets. His fingers hesitated on the handle -- that was the same cabinet door that had smacked him silly. No point in giving into it. Jerry opened the door, got the Jack Daniels and a shot glass, then sat back down. "Hey, you know what's haunting my house? You said you and your kid researched already."

Reaching into the duffel again, John pulled a dark brown folder and opened it on the table so Jerry could see the printouts from microfiche of old newspaper articles. "In 1894, a murderer tore a path through the county. Bastard tortured and killed the family who lived here, husband, wife, teenaged boy, little girl." John eyed the whiskey bottle and swallowed so hard Jerry could hear the click in his throat. "The sheriff's men tracked him down and shot him dead. All happened here."

Jerry read one of the articles, his hand curled comfortingly against the smooth glass of the whiskey bottle. "Jesus," he said under his breath. "So the killer's haunting my place?" He took another shot of whiskey.

"Maybe the family too. We don't know. You said the face in the mirror was young -- could be the boy. We need to find out more about what happened. In the meantime--" John tugged the folder towards him, closed it as if it might be giving off a bad smell. "Plenty of work to do. You got construction blueprints?"

"Yeah. They're in the unfinished room. I'll go and --"

"No." John shut his journal and stood up. "You stay here, in the salt circle. I'll need to be laying down more salt before you go anywhere in your house, since you refuse to leave the way any sane man would. I'll get the blueprints while I'm at it."

With three shots of whiskey in him, Jerry didn't feel nearly as annoyed as he should have. "Anyone ever tell you that you have excellent people skills?"

"All the time," John said, his voice laced with irony. Again there was that fleeting smile through the beard. He took up his bag of salt and left the kitchen.

Listening to his fridge hum in the quiet, Jerry had one more shot of whiskey. Through the windows in the back door, the light of the setting sun near the horizon was old and parchment yellow.

Jerry put the bottle away and kept on paying bills, because life went on, even when his house was haunted.

* * *

It was dark by the time Dean got back to Kittanning with a brand-new (yeah, right, he hadn't just fallen off the turnip truck, but that's what Caleb's friend Beth Ann had claimed) camcorder, noncontact thermometer, a better motion detector than the one they already had, and some extra ammo that he'd talked Beth Ann into throwing in as a bonus. He'd gotten a good price; Dean didn't think Dad could have done it much better.

Beth Ann seemed like kind of a tough gal, though she didn't look it. Didn't look like a hunter, either, more like a schoolteacher: round-cheeked, her dark hair gone mostly white, one cheek dimpling. She'd offered him home-baked brownies. But her place -- a small house with a vegetable garden out back, flower beds out front, hand-made wooden wind chimes on the front porch -- was a gold mine of equipment and supplies kept in the basement under lock, key, and high-tech coded alarm system.

He grinned a little, fingers tapping along to AC/DC's "Problem Child," blasting it loud as he dared without the cops pulling him over for disturbing the peace. If you asked him, Kittanning could use a little peace disturbing, only not the supernatural kind. The town was right on the Allegheny River, with so many churches he'd lost count. Given the sheer number of old houses, Dean wondered that the place hadn't imploded with hauntings years ago, churches or no churches. Churches weren't a guarantee against anything.

Plus the town's asshat bureaucrats had built a playground over the site of a relocated cemetery, which was just asking for trouble. As soon as this business at Jerry Panowski's was over, Dean would head over there and purify the ground himself. Otherwise some poor kids would be playing there at dusk and see a ghost, end up emotionally scarred for life.

Trees crowded in thick on either side as the Impala jounced along the dirt drive that led to Jerry's place. Dean winced as he heard and felt branches scraping against the paint job. He hated the woods, preferred the open highway. In the darkness he felt particularly closed in.

The lights of the house came into view, squares burning through the trees. Dean hadn't realized how much he'd been worried until the low-wattage jolt of relief went through him when he noted that it was ordinary, steady light, not anything weird.

The trees diminished and the dirt turned to gravel. The headlights slid over the side of the house, catching the gleaming eyes of an animal, low in the grass, and Dean jammed on the brakes.

Shit, this place was getting to him -- it wasn't as if he was at all close to hitting the critter. The eyes had startled him, was all, and hell if his heart wasn't thudding in his chest louder than a drum set. That was a first, the great Dean Winchester, scared of a raccoon.

He parked a few yards from Dad's truck, turned off the engine, gathered up the box holding the camcorder and other supplies, and stepped out into the cold autumn night. The rain had stopped and the air was sharper. Ahead of him the house rose, the point of its roof etched against the dark sky, where a few stars had started to appear near the horizon.

In an instant, Dean saw something else: a house smaller than the one in front of him, but with a familiar central structure. Firelight danced over four figures that dangled with their arms above their heads. Rope was slung over the rafters, tied around their wrists. They were in a sparse room Dean recognized as the unfinished one with the brick fireplace. The woman and the little girl were in long dresses, the man and boy in slacks, white shirts, vests, their heads slumped, bodies limp.

The boy raised his head and the too-long hair fell back, revealing a thin face smudged with dirt, blood streaked down the side. His lips moved as he looked right at Dean -- no, more like looked right _into_ him.

Dean had his handgun out, a reflex action. Iron-tipped bullets were some use against spirits, but these poor people didn't appear to be much of a threat. He could still see the worn face of the present-day house through their bodies, a weird doubling effect that made him dizzy. Everything had taken on a pale red cast.

What was the boy saying? It was two short syllables, it shouldn't be hard to figure out.

A sharp scrape beside him made Dean spin, gun aimed. The noise continued, harsh, shrill, metallic, more vicious than brand new chalk against a blackboard.

On the hood of the Impala -- _his_ Impala -- an invisible force carved lines into the paint job.

"What the fuck! Get off of my car!" Dean fired once at the air just above the hood, on the off chance he'd hit the entity. Good thing Jerry's house was so far away from the neighbors'.

The lines kept appearing with the accompanying scrape that made his scalp prickle. Dean fumbled in his jacket for the flask of holy water, uncapped it and sprinkled it over the hood.

The scraping stopped.

The front door slammed open, and then Dad was hurrying towards him with a shotgun. "Dean!" When he saw that Dean was on his feet and apparently unhurt, he slowed, and stopped. "You fired your gun. What happened?"

Dean turned towards his father, the flask in one hand and his handgun in the other and, hell, if the gun and flask weren't shaking a little in his grip. He held on harder and took a deep breath. "I saw something--"

He looked over Dad's shoulder. Jerry was hurrying in Dad's wake carrying a baseball bat, and it would have been funny except for the look on Jerry's face, which suggested he was prepared to do serious damage.

Beyond Jerry, Dean saw the people were gone. It was just the house as it stood now, normal light spilling out through the open front door.

"Shit." Dean lifted his gun arm and rubbed his sleeve hard against his eyes. Then he lowered his arm and looked again. "I just saw 'em, Dad. They were right there, hanging by their wrists, bloodied up..." He became aware that Dad was gripping his shoulders.

"Easy," Dad said, his voice a low rumble, familiar and deep as the Impala's engine.

"Hey, uh, guys?" Jerry was standing at the front of the Impala, the baseball bat pointed towards the ground. He pointed at the hood. "I think someone was trying to leave you a memo."

Pulling out of Dad's grip, Dean went to stand next to Jerry, while Dad moved to join him on the other side.

In the pale light from the front door, they could clearly see the long, thin scratches on the Impala's hood.

Gouging into the metal, the lines formed words:

THEY ARE MINE.

[read Part 2](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/95194.html)

  
Part 1  
[Part 2](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/95194.html)  
[Part 3](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/95297.html)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jerry Panowski has a problem, and only John and Dean Winchester can help him.

The den was close to the hotspot, so it became their base of operations. Dean snaked video cable from the good camera he'd set up in the unfinished room down the hall into Jerry's thirty-two-inch color TV. He'd already set up another video line, using their old camcorder, from the bathroom into the ancient black and white monitor Dad had placed on the wooden coffee table.

Seated on the couch, Dad frowned over the manual for the new motion detector.

So far he hadn't said anything to Dean about the car, which was a relief, because if Dean talked about it, he'd start cursing a blue streak and might not be able to stop.

It was his _car_. His beautiful fucking car. It would cost hundreds of dollars to get the paint job fixed, but that was beside the point. The point was, the bastard had messed with his _car_ , and now he really, really _really_ wanted to burn its ghostly, serial killer ass all the way down to the tenth level of hell. Or wherever evil ghosts went after he and Dad salted and burned the remains. He'd never given it much thought.

So tomorrow morning he'd find out where this creep was buried, he and Dad would dig up the grave tomorrow night, torch the sucker's remains, maybe stick around for twenty-four hours to make sure it was really gone, and then be on the road again. Easy as pie. Unless he couldn't find the burial site, or burning the remains didn't work. Sometimes it wasn't enough, sometimes they attached to places, and this sonuvabitch might well have imprinted itself into the walls. 

Jerry poked his head in the door. "Guys, dinner's here." 

Dad put down the manual with a sigh and eyed Dean. "Got all the cameras set up okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Leave them recording while we eat." Dad got up and followed Jerry out of the room.

The image on the black-and-white monitor flickered. Dean jiggled the vertical control knob, then smacked the top. It wasn't ghostly activity; the screen was going. Dad should really get a new one. Dean remembered him using it on one of the first hunts he'd ever been allowed to tag along on, a haunting in Tennessee. The night had ended with Dean sewing a few stitches into Dad's side. 

He stepped out into the hall, into a cold spot that prickled the hair on his arms. When he turned and waved his hands over the area where he'd just been standing, the cold was gone.

* * *

The Harrisons ate like soldiers before battle.

Jerry watched while John consumed beef, broccoli, and rice with a methodical thoroughness, careful not to spill any food, while Dean tucked away his extra spicy general tso's chicken. Sauce dribbled down his chin; Dean absently wiped it with a napkin and went right on eating without missing a beat.

They didn't speak to each other, and barely spoke to him. Ever since the words had been carved into Dean's car, he'd felt the change, and the tension was enough that Jerry felt as if he was treading on broken eggshells. It was none of his business, and they were doing him a huge favor going after his ghost, but if this continued, his ulcer was going to kick up again.

He kind of liked these guys; he couldn't decide if he'd be sorry when they finally left, or if he would breathe a huge prayer of relief. Both, probably. 

Poking his chicken with a chopstick, Jerry watched the sauce pooling on his paper plate. He and Chris had ordered Chinese food his last evening there. That had been a silent meal, too, Chris' head bent over the food, not looking at his father, while Jerry struggled to swallow each bite, an ache of regret in his chest, unsure how to break the silence.

Maybe John Harrison was feeling the same way, although what he had to regret regarding Dean, Jerry wasn't sure. 

Dean finished eating first, his chair scraping back loudly in the quiet kitchen. He crushed his fortune cookie in his palm and tossed the pieces in his mouth, then barely glanced down at his fortune. The chewing stopped, just for an instant, and then he flicked the little piece of paper away from him across the table and gathered up his plate and an empty rice carton.

"Where's the trash can?" he asked.

"Under the sink."

John finished, wiped his mouth, and tossed his napkin down on his now empty paper plate. "We'll be sitting up all night in the den, monitoring. Probably do a few sweeps of the place to take readings throughout the night. You should just go about your usual business. I've put a salt line around your bed. If there's any trouble, you stay there."

"Actually, I thought I'd sit up with you," Jerry said, and cracked open a fortune cookie. _Things are about to take a turn for the better._

"Not sure that's a good idea." John fidgeted with his fortune cookie, then finally broke it open. He glanced at the piece of paper inside, snorted softly, and crumpled it up.

Dean was leaning against the counter again, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, staring at the floor.

"Do I have to say it again?" Jerry leaned back in his chair, the wooden slats creaking. "My house."

"No. Guess I can't stop you from sitting wherever you want in your own home. We're using your TV set as a video monitor, though."

"So, I'll read." Jerry picked up John's crumpled fortune and unfolded it. _You have a strong and sensitive personal nature._

"I'm going to go check the equipment." Dean pushed himself off from the counter and left.

John's eyes tracked his son as he went, mouth half-open as if he wanted to speak. Running his hand over his face a few times, John got up and dumped his paper plate and empty cartons in the trash. "Have to get a couple of things from the truck."

Alone, Jerry let out the breath he'd been holding. The scrape of branches tapping against the walls tonight was less familiar house-noise and more as if something wanted to get in. Chris had hated it here, said it gave him the creeps, right from the first day, and that was unusual. He'd always been comfortable in new places, with new people. So had Eileen. 

God, he missed both of them.

He picked up Dean's fortune.

_You are thinking of someone far away._

The phone was on the wall over by the fridge. Jerry hadn't meant to go over to it, but he did. His hand rested on the receiver while he watched the digital readout blink 00:00 at him; he hadn't gotten around to resetting the time after the last power outage.

Jerry lowered his hand; he wasn't sure if he could take the cold click of a hang-up in his ear one more time.

* * *

In the den, Dean was lying on his back on the couch. It was too long for his body, so he'd hooked his ankles over the armrest. The soles of his boots were what Jerry saw of him first. He was holding up some kind of small digital instrument, moving it slowly back and forth, looking up at the readout and frowning.

"Sixty-five degrees," he said.

In the armchair, John jotted something down on graph paper. "Okay, that's it for now."

Dean put the small black instrument on the coffee table and lifted a hand in greeting. "Hey, Jerry."

Jerry sat on the other couch, the squishy battered one he'd kept because it dated from the earliest days of his marriage and Eileen hadn't wanted it. "What happens now?"

"We hang around and take readings." Dean yawned and produced a Walkman. He put the headphones on, and then the tinny sound of music drifted into the room. The boots began to twitch in time with the beat. 

Both Harrisons seemed to be a series of contradictions, John with the hints of a different kind of person lurking beneath the face he presented, and Dean, one moment wearing the worn-out confidence of someone who'd been at the business for forty years, and the next acting like an overgrown teenager.

"Tomorrow Dean's going to go find out more about your ghosts," John said. "The best solution is to find out where the bodies are buried, salt them, and burn them. We haven't figured out where they are yet."

The minutes dragged on. Jerry stared at the shadowy images on his big TV screen and on the little black-and-white monitor. 

"That your boy?" John said, looking at the framed photograph of Chris on the shelf above the TV, taken at Chris' graduation from middle school. 

"Yeah. That's my boy. Chris," said Jerry, feeling a bittersweet twist of pride and regret in his chest. "He's sixteen. They're tough at that age."

John made another mark on the paper. "Actually, they're tough at any age."

Something flickered in John's face. "You...." Jerry hesitated. "You seem like you've had a lot experience with teenagers. You have more than one kid?"

There was a long stretch of silence before John answered. "I got another boy, Sam. Four years younger than Dean." John scratched his pen across the graph paper, but he was making an aimless, geometric design now, no longer jotting notes.

"Where is he?" As soon as he said it, Jerry knew he was digging too deep. It was none of his damn business. He hoped he hadn't stumbled into making John think of some family tragedy.

"California. Stanford University." Unexpectedly, John's face broke into a slow grin, but it was as much war wound as smile. "Got in with a full-ride scholarship. Real smart kid."

"I need some air." Dean was on his feet, flinging the Walkman down to the couch and grabbing up his jacket.

Jerry realized, as Dean strode across the room with heavy, quick steps, that they hadn't heard the music for the last minute or so. Meanwhile John had the same look he'd had back in the kitchen. 

"Dean..." John said, but he was already gone, leaving behind the same kind of stillness that fell after thunderstorms.

* * *

Dean really wanted to slam his fist into the wall, but he was afraid if he did that the house might fall right over. Instead he went down the porch steps, the boards creaking under his heavy boots, and sat on the first one. In the glow of the house's exterior lights, the scratches on the Impala's hood stood out like scars. 

This job was turning into a big ball of suck. At least Jerry seemed to be a nice guy, and he was taking all of this better than most people. He hadn't kicked them out, or screamed at them, or called the police, or called them nutjobs. Not like that little old lady last month who had a raicho infestation. She'd accused them of being demons and had thrown holy water at them.

The LCD readout on his cell glowed like a large green firefly as he traced his fingers over the keypad.

Above him, the porch light blinked out, and the squares of light the windows cast onto the peeling paint of the porch step vanished. Dean put his cell away as he got to his feet and hurried back into the house.

"Dad?" he called into the darkness.

"We're still in here," Dad answered.

"It's the goddamned fuses," Jerry said as Dean fumbled his way in the direction of the flashlight beam Dad aimed in his direction, guiding him. "They got the new wiring in, but it's an old house and the system keeps overloading."

"If that's all it is," Dean said. Chances were, in an old house like this, it was only a blown fuse, but he'd learned not to assume.

So had Dad. "You have your gun?" When Dean nodded, Dad turned to Jerry. "Where's the fuse box?" 

"Basement. Fuses are on the shelf beneath the box. Down the stairs, to the left." Jerry opened a cabinet door beneath the TV set and took out a candle and matches. "I'll do it."

But Dad handed Dean another flashlight and held up his hand. "Nope. Nobody goes anywhere alone."

"It's getting a little cold in here, don't you think?" Dean still had on his jacket, and could feel the chill even through the layers.

Swinging the flashlight around, Dad tilted his head to one side, then nodded. "Could be we got company. Ghosts prefer the dark. Either way, we still need to be able to put the lights back on when we need 'em." He picked up his shotgun. "Better fix the fuses now."

They followed Jerry and the flickering burn of his candle through the house to the kitchen, where Jerry opened a door tucked past the fridge. Dean aimed his flashlight down, revealing sparse wooden steps with a thin railing, and snatches of brick below. It smelled dank and cold, but not danker or colder than any other old cellar, and he'd been in a lot of cellars in a lot of old houses.

The cellar stretched the full length of the house, with brick arched doorways dividing it into many rooms. Dean's flashlight beam snagged on a workbench, stacks of boxes all marked BOOKS, and an exercise bike that looked as if no one had used it in a while. Other than that, the space was empty; Jerry didn't keep a lot of clutter.

Dad went over to the fuse box. He set his flashlight on the bookshelf with the light aimed towards him, then reached around on the shelf until he found the fuses. While Dad went to work, his fingers moving with quick assurance, and Jerry hovered at the foot of the stairs, Dean went poking around. 

He had to duck to avoid hitting his head on a low arch, and then the floor dropped about a foot, without warning. Dean grabbed the brick wall to keep from falling and found himself in a small room. Shining his flashlight around, he saw a recess in the wall, an old fireplace. This room was a few degrees colder but nothing pinged him as wrong until the bulb in his flashlight dulled down to a brown-yellow and began to flicker. 

Dad said his name, sharp and questioning.

"In here," Dean called out. "I think there's someth--" He took a step towards the entrance, and jerked to a halt.

He couldn't lift his left foot. 

Muscles straining, Dean tried again, let out a grunt of frustration, and stopped to shine the feeble flashlight beam down. The light died, and Dean smacked the end of it a few times. It flared up again enough to catch a damp gleam on the cement.

There had been no water on the floor when he'd first come in. Dean smacked the flashlight again. This time it blazed back to white light, and he saw a black, thick substance around his boots, up to his ankles, and shit, he couldn't lift his feet. They were as stuck as if he'd actually stepped into soft tar.

"Uh, Dad? Think I'm having a small problem here."

The beam of Dad's flashlight fell over him, hitting him in the chest. Dean pointed down, and Dad let out a curse.

"What?" Jerry said. "What is it?"

But Dad didn't answer the question. He held his flashlight out to Jerry. "Keep that aimed at Dean's feet." 

Jerry set the candle on its side on the floor so the wick would keep burning and took the flashlight, while Dad stepped down into the room.

"Dad, your feet. Get back." The stuff was up over his own ankles now, almost over the top of his boots, and had spread wider. The flashlight beam caught the now visible mist of their breaths, and Dean's chest squeezed tighter. He felt himself sinking, and Dean bit the inside of his cheek, willing himself to calm down.

Dad moved back, then gripped the brick wall with one hand and reached out to Dean with the other. Dean grabbed his father's hand, felt Dad's grip strong and dry around his fingers. 

"Your other hand, Dean," Dad said.

So Dean tossed his now useless flashlight out of the room, where it clattered to the cement and then rolled to a stop at Jerry's feet. Then he grabbed Dad's arm. The pool of slime had inched up above his boots and oozed cold into his socks. Dad pulled so hard Dean thought his shoulder, or Dad's, might dislocate.

It was up to his knees now. The clouds of Dad's breath streamed faster into the air. "Rope."

"Jesus. Yeah." Jerry vanished into the darkness of the cellar, leaving them with the candle's feeble glow.

Up to his waist, now. "Dad?" 

His father's grip went tighter. "Hang on."

There was a crash, and then Jerry came back with a garden hose coiled over his shoulder.

"This is all I've got." Jerry uncoiled the end of the hose and tossed it to Dean, who let go of Dad's arm to catch it.

Dean started tying it around his waist, but he couldn't do it with Dad still gripping his hand. Before Dean could speak, Dad's grip lessened, and he let go, although he kept his hand out, reaching towards Dean. In the shadowy light, his face looked haggard, and when Dean spotted the fear in Dad's eyes, he felt the edges of his own control start to crumble into panic.

The slimy goop was almost up to his chest and he couldn't feel his feet anymore and his fingers felt numb. Dad pulled hard on the hose, and Dean felt the tug across his back, under his armpits, and the black substance began to recede around him, until it was back to his waist again. He wondered if the hose would tear. Grunting with the strain, Dad gave another massive pull, and Dean suddenly flew forward, out of the black pool's grip. He landed against Dad, who staggered into Jerry, and all three of them fell to the cellar floor, with Dad's arms tight around Dean.

His own breath rasping in his ears, Dean rolled free and lay on his back a moment, while Dad knelt beside him. There was black slime all over the front of Dad's shirt.

"What the _fuck_ was that?" Jerry tugged at his shirt, nose wrinkling. He'd gotten splattered with the stuff too.

"Ectoplasm." Dean felt Dad's hands on his back, helping him sit up. "Nasty shit."

Jerry leaned against the brick wall, gasping for breath. " _Jesus_. You guys see this kind of thing a lot?"

Dad caught Dean's eye and for a second, he thought Dad might laugh. Then Dad looked away, and started to pull Dean to his feet.

"Just another day at the office," Dean said.

* * *

You could upgrade this job from _big ball of suck_ to _massive stinking piles of suckitude,_ Dean decided, ducking his head to let the stream of hot water pound onto the back of his neck. Trying not to think about all the nooks and crannies in his body where the ectoplasm might have gotten, he reached for the soap and lathered up a third time. His chills hadn't subsided until he'd been in the hot shower for five minutes. 

He watched the last of the slime swirl at his feet and vanish down the drain. The stuff had sent the EMF meter squealing on an almost hysterical note. 

Two thumps on the bathroom door. "You okay in there, son?"

"Yes, sir." Dean closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the pale blue tiles. 

He stayed in for another five minutes, then shut off the water. With a towel knotted around his waist, he stepped out of the bathtub and stopped, blinking through the steam that warmed the cold air.

Words dripped down through the condensation on the mirror: HELP US.

The warmth from the shower seeped out of him, and he thought of the other message etched into the hood of the Impala.

"We're trying, all right?" he said to the mirror. 

His fingers crept up to touch the amulet that rested cool against his chest. Then he snatched the fresh T-shirt and jeans hanging over the towel bar.

* * *

Jerry couldn't relax. He wandered from the bookshelf to the window and back, tempted to go out to the kitchen and collect the bottle of whiskey. He thought he'd had enough, though. And it wouldn't make any of this go away. Wouldn't change the fact that his house could have killed Dean, and Jerry would have been responsible. 

The sound of hot water rattling through the pipes to the shower was faint and sharp in the old house. He'd probably have to replace the plumbing next. John sat hunched over the coffee table, which was littered with the EMF meter, thermometer, and the folder full of clippings.

"Why do you do this?" Jerry stopped to stare at the image on his TV screen, the dark room on the other side of the wall. "Do you make good money? We haven't discussed rates--"

"Not doing it for the money," John said, without looking up. "If you can afford to pay, you do. If you can't, it doesn't matter. We'd do it anyway."

But _why_ , Jerry wanted to ask. The bottom of a USMC tattoo peeked out from under the short sleeves of John's shirt. 

Jerry had missed Vietnam by a few years, but his cousin hadn't. Steven sometimes talked about it if he had a few beers in him and was feeling down, and it made Jerry glad he hadn't been there. 

The water shut off with a creak. In the new quiet, Jerry asked, "Your youngest boy, he know how to bust ghosts too?"

John's gaze rose to meet Jerry's and then flicked back down to his work. "Learned to do it same as Dean. We worked together, the three of us, until he left for Stanford." Jerry thought he might be done talking, and that was fine, he wasn't going to push, not this time, even though he was curious as hell. But then John went on. "Sam could read early, could recite Latin almost as well as he knew English by the time he was nine. Good with people, good with computers, good with languages. Never took to this business the way Dean did, though. Dean..." He paused, rolling his pen back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. "Dean's a natural, can hit a target straight on in the dark, blindfolded, and in a blizzard."

The way he said it made Jerry wonder if Dean had ever had to hit a target while blindfolded at night during a blizzard.

"You must be proud of them both." A photograph of Chris stood on the bookshelf; Jerry brushed his finger across his son's image.

"I am. I think they got the best of themselves from...well, they didn't get it from me."

Again, Jerry had the feeling of a long story behind the words, but he wasn't going to ask where John's wife was. He was surprised John had talked as much as he had. It was strange, he seemed so ordinary -- Jerry knew twenty guys just like him -- and yet too frightening to be ordinary.

Footsteps approached down the hall and Dean appeared, barefoot, wearing a clean T-shirt and jeans. "We got another memo."

John's head went up. "What?" 

Dean dropped into an armchair. "When I got out of the shower, there were words in the condensation on the mirror. They said 'Help us.'"

"The boy," John said. "It's the boy. He's not the one causing most of the disturbances, though. I think that's the killer's ghost. The one who carved up your car."

Jerry's fingers closed around the frame of Chris' picture, then let go. "I didn't believe him."

"Didn't believe who?" Dean rubbed a hand through his damp hair, making it stand up in small spikes.

"Chris. When he told me what he saw in his bathroom mirror. I thought...See, he felt uneasy here from the start. Said it made him uncomfortable, as if something was watching him." Jerry thought of the dark shadows under his son's eyes that had developed a few weeks after they moved in. "My wife Eileen and I, we divorced last year. Chris didn't handle it well. He was so angry at me. When he told me about seeing the face...I'm ashamed to say I thought he was making shit up to get back at me, to have an excuse to leave and go back to his mom. We fought. He was furious -- now I realize he was also terrified." Jerry sat down on the nearest chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. He felt like an idiot, going on like this to two complete strangers. "I told him if he didn't want to be here, he was free to leave whenever he wanted to. So he did." The short laugh that broke out of him hurt his chest.

There was a long quiet after that, but it wasn't a listening quiet or the soft quiet of sympathy; it was almost electric, and when Jerry looked up, he expected to see a hundred ghosts. Instead, he only saw Dean and John Harrison. Dean looked down, tugging at a loose thread on the arm of the chair, while John kept his gaze on his journal, absently, as if he wasn't seeing the pages.

"A day after he left, I saw something else." He hadn't told anyone about this part. Not Eileen, not Chris, although he wished now that he had. "It wasn't what Chris described. Maybe it's what the carpenter saw, I don't know -- but this guy, he was tall and big and had a smile like a knife, like he'd eat you alive. And his eyes...believe me, if that's what my son saw, he'd have mentioned the eyes."

"Where were you when you saw it?" John said, his voice brisk now, pen poised, and Dean leaned forward. Whatever had been going on a moment ago wasn't done, exactly; their intense interest had pushed it aside.

"In the unfinished room, poking around to see the work that had been done so far. It was dusk, and there are no lights in there. Felt kind of cold right before I saw the bastard."

"That's pretty standard," Dean said. 

"Yeah, okay." Jerry took a deep breath. " I convinced myself afterwards it was a nightmare." He let out a shaken breath that was almost a laugh. "You hear about this kind of stuff, about cold spots and all that, but I never thought I...uh...what's that? On the video?"

Where a moment ago there had been only the dark, empty room, now there were balls of light, two, three....no, four...arching down from the ceiling to the floor.

"Yup." Dean was out of his chair and kneeling in front of the TV screen like a kid on Saturday morning. "Got some major orbing going on here."

Now Jerry knew how Eileen had always felt when he talked shop too much, but he didn't have a chance to ask for an explanation, because the temperature in the room dropped and a loud _crack_ sounded.

Jerry spun around, and at first couldn't see the source, but then another crack followed, and he saw the plaster spit out from the wall as a split formed. It started slow, then faster, running up towards the ceiling, letting out a shower of mortar and paint.

"Guys, is that pretty standard, too?"

"Nope." Dean was on his feet, as was John.

The crack got wider after it reached the ceiling, then stopped, almost as if something was holding it back or it was reconsidering -- whatever _it_ was -- before running on with the inevitability of a freight train, dropping ever larger chunks of plaster down on their heads.

"Go, Dean," John barked, and the kid immediately headed for the door.

It was all so goddamned surreal, Jerry thought, staring up at the ceiling of his den. He knew his mouth was probably gaping open. Plain old common sense would dictate that when the ceiling of your den had an enormous, ever-growing crack in it, with bits of plaster falling on your head, it might be a good idea to _get out of the way_. Usually he was better in a crisis than this.

John's tackle had a force that felt like a small plane landing. There was a tremendous crunch and a thud that shook the house to its foundations. Jerry hit the wall of the hallway before John did. They both slid down, coughing in a haze of mortar dust.

Jerry had to blink a few times before he figured out what he was seeing: the ceiling of his den now appeared to be on the floor.

Seated next to him, one knee drawn up, covered in dust, John was cursing a steady streak. He paused to croak out, "Dean?"

"Right here." Dean crouched beside his father. He was also covered in dust, but not as much. He grabbed his father's arm, right above the tattoo, and glanced from John to Jerry. "You guys okay?"

John nodded and leaned his head back against the wall, before his eyes slid over to fix Jerry with a baleful stare. " _Now_ will you go to a motel?"

* * *

He never knew, not even later, whether what he saw had been a dream.

Man with a smile like a knife, eyes burning and stark against his pale face, leaning back to look up at them as they swung by their wrists from ropes slung over the exposed wooden beams: the man, the woman, the girl.

The boy was on the floor, wrists bound. He tried to jerk away as the man grabbed his hair, yanked him to his feet. Hooking his ankle around a wooden chair to draw it closer, the man started to lift the boy, who began to struggle, long arms and legs flailing, the anger and resistance in his face so fierce it made the burning dark eyes seem apathetic.

He was going to string the boy up with the others -- hang him there until he died of thirst and starvation or shock. The kid got a kick in, and the man gave a silent scream and drew back his arm for a blow.

"Get away from him, you son of a bitch!" Dean leapt at the man, but met no resistance. He went right through him, the figure wavering a moment as if it were made of smoke.

His palms scraped against the rough floorboards and he turned, reaching out towards the boy, but there was nothing there, and the roughness turned to the soft bumps of a carpet.

"Dean. Dean, can you hear me? Dean!"

There was Dad's voice, sharp in his ears, and hands gripping under his arms, hauling him off the floor. Dean staggered, blinking, and took in a couch, glass coffee table, and the predawn light coming in through the windows. A blanket lay tangled at his feet, along with a few throw pillows that matched the couch and probably weren't intended to go on the floor.

They were in Jerry's living room, a much more formal space than the ruined den. Dean rubbed his hands over his face and remembered: Jerry was gone. He'd called a pilot friend of his, Chuck somebody-or-other, and would stay there until they gave him the all clear. For the remainder of the night, he and Dad had camped out in the living room with what equipment they could salvage. They had the EMF meter, the file of clippings, and Dad's journal. Everything else that had been in the den was pretty much deep-sixed. At least Dad would have to admit it was time to replace that old monitor.

"God, Dean, what happened?" 

Dean bent to pick up his blanket, then tossed it on the couch. "Nightmare. I think. I don't know." There was a sour taste in the back of his throat. Assuming the antique wooden clock hanging on the wall was accurate, it was close to six a.m.; he'd been asleep for about three hours. "I saw them again." He nudged the throw pillow with his bare foot. "All of them."

Dad's jaw tightened. "We're ending this. First, let's get some coffee and food into you, and then I want you back in town, at the historical society, at the library...Hell, go door to door if you have to and find out where the bodies are buried."

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Dean followed Dad through the early-morning peace of the house. The floorboards creaked beneath their steps. 

In the kitchen, salt still dusted the floor, gritty under his bare feet. Dad started opening cabinets, looking for the coffee can. In a moment, Dad had the coffee brewing and toast in the toaster. 

Dean sat at the kitchen table, exhausted, feeling useless, swimming against a current stronger than he was. "Maybe it's not a good idea for you to be here alone. You could come with me...we'll do the research together."

A few heartbeats of hesitation passed before Dad answered. "No."

The toast popped up, singed at the edges, the charred smell filling the room. It was comforting, as if it could ward off spirits. 

Before Dean could get up, Dad had put the toast on a plate, set it down in front of him, and was pulling the butter and grape jelly out of the fridge.

"Yeah, but Dad..."

"I said, no. You're on research detail. I'll stay here. That's an order." Dad's expression had gone closed off, and he quickly turned away to pour the coffee into two large mugs. "There's a lot of preparation to do here in case the salt and burn doesn't work."

Dean stared down at his half-burned toast, at the purple jelly soaking into it and dribbling back onto the plate, feeling about ten years old. 

He intended to argue. _It's not safe for anyone to be here alone. Not even you._

But when he opened his mouth, only two words got out, clawing past the resentment and bewilderment weighing against his chest.

"Yes, sir."

* * *

As soon as the Impala turned onto the highway from the dirt road, Dean felt better. With the sunrise gleaming through the bare trees, he cranked down the window and just breathed. The farther he got from the house, the more relieved he felt.

Dad was back there by himself, though, would be for hours, maybe all day if Dean couldn't find the information fast.

"Fuck." Dean eased up on the gas and hit the brakes, not caring that he'd stopped right in the middle of the road. At this early hour, no one would be driving by. "Fuck!" He slammed his palms against the steering wheel.

They needed help. It wasn't just Dad; it was the house itself that made him feel he was drowning. Its spirits were powerful, too much old fear and anger on one side, and vicious hunger on the other, the victims and their murderer, pent up for a century until Jerry Panowski decided to renovate.

The Impala's engine snapped and purred beneath him as he held her restrained, and he leaned his elbow on the edge of the window.

There were names Dean knew, people he could call. The problem was, Dad had only so many markers left, and they weren't in deadly danger right that minute. Pastor Jim would do it, but Dean didn't know if he could handle talking to him, with his patient voice and gentle questions. He'd ask, _How are things with you and John_ , and Dean wasn't sure he could keep the words from tumbling out, from giving his frustration a voice. And if Jim Murphy were worried enough, he'd come there, or he'd insist on talking to Dad, and then Dad would say something to piss off Pastor Jim, and it would be what had happened with Bobby Singer all over again. 

No, he wasn't going to pull Pastor Jim into this. This was for family.

The phone rang and rang after Dean punched the number into his cell, and for a moment he thought he'd just get voice mail, but then a sleepy, familiar voice mumbled, "Yeah 'llo?"

"Sammy!" Dean said, as if he was having a great time, no worries. A smile did start tugging at his face, despite it all; he hadn't spoken to Sam once since he'd left.

From the other end there was a long, confused, eloquent silence and then a much less sleepy, " _Dean?_ "

"No, it's the pope! What's the matter, you stay up too late partying?" Dean drummed his fingers against the chrome rim of the window.

"Uh, no. Studying, and actually it's, like, four o'clock in the morning here."

He stopped drumming his fingers. "Um. Sorry," he mumbled.

"No, no, it's okay. I was pulling an all-nighter anyway. How...how are you?" Sam said. "How's Dad?"

Dean's fingers clenched around the cell. "He's fine. We're...we're on this job. Nothing major, you know, the usual. Anyway, look, I'm sorry I bothered you; sounds like you've got a shitload of studying to get through..."

"Are you guys okay?"

_No, we're not okay. You're not here. I almost drowned in ectoplasm. Dad's back there alone and he keeps pushing me away and I don't know what to do._

"Yeah," Dean said. "Just your run-of-the-mill spook." 

"Do you need help?"

"Maybe. It's, I mean, I'm sure we'll manage, but we're having trouble finding the burial records. We need to salt and burn this motherfucker. Had a pass through the local newspaper clippings already, but they don't say where they're buried. I was going to try the historical society next."

God, why couldn't he just _ask_?

"They?" Sam said, and Dean winced.

"Might be a nest of ghosts. It's kind of complicated. Anyway, you're busy..."

"Give me the information," Sam said, sharp as the click of the cap coming off a pen.

Dean gave him the names. "Call me when you find anything."

"Sure."

Dean hung up, turned the car around, and headed back for the house, bracing himself for the storm.


	3. The November Guests (3/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jerry Panowski has a problem, and only John and Dean Winchester can help him.

Dad had turned Jerry's living room into central ops. Mortar dust coated his shirt and jeans; Dean guessed he'd been digging around in the den, salvaging more equipment. The old monitor, a jagged crack in the screen, sat on the rug in a pale square of sunlight. Why didn't Dad throw it away already?

At the sound of Dean's footsteps, Dad's hands stilled over the bullets and the shotgun shells lined up on the glass table.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dad was on his feet so fast, it created a breeze that sent a few pages of their research fluttering to the floor.

Staying squarely under the arch of the doorway, Dean held out his hands. "Listen."

"I gave you a direct order, Dean." Dad moved out from behind the coffee table.

"Yes, sir, you did, but I need you to...will you just...will you just _listen_ to me? Please? Don't say anything yet. Just listen." Dean took a hesitant step farther into the room. "The thing is, this house, what's going on here, it's bad. This isn't some regular old haunting. This house? Could kill us. And you wouldn't let me stay here alone...I get that, okay? I do." He took a few agitated paces towards the window, stopped, paced back. "So why do you think I'd be able to go off and leave _you_ here alone? I could come back and find out a wall had fallen on you or the floor had opened up and swallowed you or you'd gotten sucked into the afterlife, like in some stupid horror movie."

It seemed as if it took forever until Dad finally answered. "All right," he said.

Dean realized only then that his hands had clenched into fists. He opened his palms. "What?"

"I said, I get it."

"Oh." Dean looked down at the dark traces of ectoplasm still clinging to his boots.

Dad looked down at the mix of ammo and papers. "We still have to salt and burn the bones. How exactly do you propose we find the burial sites?" He picked up a few pages, grip tightening on them until his fingers formed deep creases. "We've checked the Web. We need the hard copy town records, or more powerful databases than we have access to here." Dad heaved a deep sigh. "Guess I'll give Jim Murphy a call."

"Um." Dean shoved his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat. "I've got someone on that already."

Dad's head shot up. "Who?"

"Sam."

"You called _Sam?_ " Dad's voice had risen towards levels that could rattle glass.

Dean flinched, and said, trying to keep his voice controlled, "He said he'd get right on it."

"Did you tell him how difficult this job was?" Now Dad was moving towards him, with his head slightly down, shoulders set.

It was time to dig his heels in, literally if he could, or at least figuratively. "No, of course not!" Dean's voice echoed back at him sharply off the ceiling. He hadn't meant to match Dad in volume. "Of course not," he repeated, more softly, keeping his boots planted firmly in place, fighting the urge -- a defensive reflex-- to take a step back.

Maybe because Dean held his ground, Dad stopped and let out a breath. "If Sam's going to insist on college," he said, his voice tight with anger but at a more reasonable level, "he might as well do it the best he can. He needs to _study_ , Dean."

Dean scuffed the toe of his boot against where the rug's edge met old floorboards. The bitterness of the past three months rose and threatened to drown him as he mumbled, "That's rich, coming from you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dad said, hard and sharp.

"Where do you get off sounding so proud of him?" Dean faced his father, only a few feet between them, and watched Dad swallow hard. His throw had struck true, it _hurt,_ and right then, Dean told himself, he didn't care. "I heard you. When you were talking to Jerry. Guess you forgot to tell him the part where you told Sam to leave and not come back."

The silence of the morning intensified, descending on Dean's ears with an almost tangible pressure, the echo of his own words ringing back at him.

He expected Dad to explode, to start yelling again, to tell him to watch his smart mouth. But he only said, voice muted and thick with sadness, "If I sound proud, it's because I am. I love him. Don't you think I'd take back what I said if I could?" Dad sat down on the couch like his bones ached, buried his face in his palms a moment and then raised his head, looking older than Dean ever remembered seeing him, eyes too bright. "Don't you think I haven't wished, every day since, that I could take those words back?"

"Why'd you say that to him if you didn't mean it?" Dean said, his voice harsh to his own ears, and sorry for it now, but confusion and bitterness were still sour at the back of his throat. "Why don't you tell _Sam_ what you just told me?"

"I didn't think he'd actually leave," Dad said, his fingers twisting the wedding ring on his finger, voice like cracked glass. "And now...can't undo what's already happened, unsay things already said."

It seemed to be too much effort, just then, to stay on his feet, so Dean slid down and sat on the bare floorboards, across the room from Dad, with the pale morning sun hitting the broken monitor between them. Dad had never been one for apologies; he corrected what mistakes he could correct, but he didn't apologize. But some part of Dean had hoped -- still hoped -- Dad would call Sam one day soon, and fix this.

Undo it.

Dean kept his eyes down, while the house seemed to lean in closer, listening. He wasn't sure if he imagined a touch against his shoulder, as if someone had bumped against it in an attempt at comfort.

He'd felt it for months, and it just cut more sharply now. One-third of what constituted "Winchester" had been ripped off, the jagged ends left open to the stinging elements. Dean suddenly missed his brother so much it was hard to breathe.

Dad cleared his throat, and then his brisk voice broke the quiet, bringing things back to business, and Dean found he could breathe again. "It'll probably take Sam a few hours to find what we need. In the meantime, we need to plan. Burning the bodies might force the ghosts to move on, but it doesn't always work. We need to put down the sigils for the banishment rituals, take stock of what we've got to fend off spirits. Because it does look as if we're dealing with some nasty ones."

"One nasty one," Dean said, staying where he was on the floor. "It's holding the others here."

"Tortured them in life, keeps torturing them in death."

"Something like that." Dean pushed himself to his feet and went over and sat next to Dad on the couch.

"I've heard about this type of haunting." Dad tugged the microfiche copies closer. "One ghost holding the others captive. I can't say I know anyone who's actually dealt with one." His fingertips brushed over the boy's face on the photograph.

Dean rolled a hollow shotgun shell case in his fingers. "What were you working on here?"

"Some way to up the punch of our ammo. Iron shot works all right, but we need an extra kick. Can't add nettle or cloves, it'll just burn when the powder burns."

"Huh." Dean put the shell down. Among the small clear plastic bags full of herbs was a large one full of rock salt. "We'd need something that wouldn't burn up."

He saw Dad follow the line of his gaze to the bag of salt. "We could mix it with the iron shot."

"Or even pack it _instead_ of iron shot."

"It might not work, Dean."

"But what would it hurt to pack a few shells with rock salt? We still have the iron shot, and iron-tipped and silver bullets for the handguns."

"Guess it's worth a try," Dad said laconically, and tugged the bag of salt over the table, across the pictures of the dead.

* * *

In addition to everything else, there were salt lines to refresh, and another round of burn smudges to do. Ghosts weren't as powerful in daylight, but anything else they could do to put up barriers couldn't hurt. At night, it might be a different story, but the barriers would still be there.

Never mind that these ghosts didn't seem to mind salt lines; maybe they were too old, too angry, and too powerful, whatever. Dean was betting that if they blasted some right into their incorporeal selves, it'd be harder for them to ignore it.

Around one, they ordered pizza for lunch. The delivery boy gave them an odd look when Dean answered the door instead of Jerry.

"Mr. Panowski's out on a beer run," Dean said.

The kid kept trying to peer past him, to see into the house. Dean wondered what Jerry had told his friend Chuck, and how much. News traveled fast in small towns.

Dean had just set the pizza box on top of the papers on the glass table when his cell rang. Dad was in the armchair, paging through his journal, tapping a pen against his knee. The pen stopped tapping as Dean answered.

"It's me," Sam said. "The first four names, the bodies are buried in the family plot. Should be back in the woods, on the property where they lived."

"What about the fifth name?" Dean glanced at Dad, who seemed to have forgotten about the journal for the moment and was watching him talk on the phone.

"Buried in the Kittanning Cemetery."

The questions behind Sam's voice seemed to stretch out to him over the phone, barely restrained.

"That's great," Dean said. "Way to go with the 411."

Dad had his head down over his journal again.

"Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you call me tomorrow?" Sam said, hesitantly, sounding as if he wasn't sure he should ask for this. "Let me know you and Dad made it through the night?"

There were about ten smart-ass remarks Dean could have made right then.

"I promise," Dean said.

* * *

Clouds devoured the November-pale afternoon sun, and the ground gave beneath his boots. Dean held his shovel slung across his shoulders, while Dad held his swinging at his side, rucksack over one shoulder.

Dean's stomach was full of pizza, but it still growled, demanding more attention -- cheesesteak, french fries, and a chocolate milk shake kind of attention.

As they reached the streambed, Dean yawned.

"You look like hell," Dad said.

Dean snorted. "So do you."

Past the stream, it only took them five or ten minutes of poking around in the underbrush before the tip of Dad's shovel hit stone. Together, they went to work, tugging aside fallen branches and the tangle of vines.

Dean suddenly ached for the brightness of the past summer, the rush of cars going by as all three of them sat on some rest stop picnic bench, insects buzzing furiously in the trees over their heads.

Soon four headstones, half-sunk into the earth, emerged.

The digging was hot work, and eventually, even in the coldness of November, Dean began to sweat. He hung his leather jacket over the branch of a sapling and kept on digging, shovel scraping into the dirt, rhythm as familiar as the scent of dank soil. Beside him, Dad was breathing hard as he worked, but showed no signs of slowing. He paused once to wipe the sleeve of his flannel shirt across his forehead, but otherwise worked as if racing against the fading daylight, going after the soil with an air of revenge. Maybe he wanted to get away from that house, this job, as much as Dean did. Maybe he, too, felt it, pressing into the back of his neck, something hateful watching them.

At last, the remains of four bodies were exposed, nestled in their wooden coffins. Dean sprinkled them with lighter fluid and salt, then stepped back while Dad dropped a match on each one.

As he and Dad crouched side by side, watching the flames, Dean tried to feel the usual grim satisfaction -- needed to feel it. But it wasn't there. He just felt hollow, and the heat of the four fires barely warmed him.

* * *

When they got back to the house a little before sundown, the air felt different, less oppressive, and at the same time, the malevolence seemed sharper, as if a layer had been removed and had let loose something worse beneath. The place was fourth-fifths less haunted than before, but it was still haunted.

"We both need to get a few hours of sleep," Dad said, arranging the blankets and pillows Dean had been using on the floor. "We can't hit the cemetery until late tonight. You take the couch."

"Nah, that's all right, Dad, you should..."

"That's an order," Dad said mildly. He lay down on his side on the rug and pulled the blanket up to his waist.

Dean got settled on the couch with another blanket. His legs were too long to fit, but he was comfortable enough if he bent his knees.

"Floor's better for my back, anyway," Dad rumbled.

It was the same excuse Dad and Dean had been giving Sam for years now, when sleeping conditions were harsh. Sam always got the single cot, or the one available (and often moldy) couch, unless one of them was injured.

Even though Dad's eyes were now closed, chest rising and falling with slow breaths, it made Dean feel as if he were keeping watch.

He probably was.

Tugging the blanket more tightly around his own shoulders, Dean closed his eyes, trying to ignore the background hum the house seemed to generate. It was almost like the low hiss-pop that crackled through speakers at the end of a vinyl record, only much more vicious.

* * *

 _They were mine._

Smile like a knife, and a knife in his hand, the man yanked a long-limbed boy in jeans and sneakers and flannel shirt towards him.

 _They were mine._

The man stopped, blade poised and gleaming in the strange gray light. He looked right at Dean, eyes burning, and licked his lips.

 _They were mine._

As before, Dean rushed him. As before, there was nothing there to tackle with his body or pound with his fists. His shoulder hit the wall hard.

 _You took mine, I take yours._

He heard laughter, rusty and jagged as a hundred nails, saw the blade flash.

* * *

He woke with a jerk, his forehead and neck wet with sweat, heart racing, confused and unable to shake off the nightmare, until a sharp curse from his father brought him fully alert.

Dad was sitting up, breathing hard. In the glow of the living room lamps, Dean noticed that Dad's forehead was shiny with sweat. Outside it was pitch dark.

"What was that?" Dad shoved his fingers through his hair as if he could scrub something from his brain.

"Wait. What?" Dean mumbled and shook his head, trying to clear it. Great, he sounded like a freakin' _genius_.

The expression on Dad's face showed he was just as befuddled as Dean.

"Dad?" Dean said, uncertain.

"Had a nightmare," Dad muttered.

Realization twisted in Dean's gut. "The man with the knife," he said, his mouth dry. "And he had..."

"Sam," Dad finished, and locked eyes with Dean.

Dean put his feet on the floor and clenched his fingers into the couch cushions so hard his knuckles went white.

Dad's noticed it, eyes flickering down, then back up to Dean's face. "He pulled him out of our memories," he said quickly. "Using him to taunt us. He can't actually _do_ anything to Sam." When Dean didn't immediately answer, he said, voice sharp and strong, "You understand?" He waited for Dean's nod before he continued. "The burning must have worked, at least partly. The family's gone on, and now he's furious at us."

Dad sounded as if he might be trying to reassure himself as much as Dean. Still, the whole thing smacked of vindictiveness, and there wasn't a precedent to make Dean believe a ghost attached to a house could travel three thousand miles in any way, shape or form.

The terror of the nightmare still licked at the edges of Dean's mind. "He said 'I take yours.'"

"Yeah, I heard him." Dad was tugging on his thick-treaded shoes, tying the laces with almost fumbling haste, and then he was on his feet fast. Dad eyed the clock on the wall -- it was only eight p.m. "Screw waiting. Let's go burn this murdering son of a bitch."

* * *

The fine drops of rain glimmered in the flashlight beam Dean aimed down into the grave where Dad was digging with slow, steady, powerful movements. It had started to drizzle about five minutes after they'd started. The headstone was neglected, covered with a tangle of weeds near the far edge of the cemetery property. Rain and wind had eaten away at the lettering, but not enough to obliterate the name.

When Dad's shovel struck wood, Dean slid down into the grave with him, and they levered the coffin open together.

"Oh, gross." Dean flung his arm up to cover his nose and mouth. Dead bodies all had a stench, no matter how long they'd been in the ground, but this one seemed particularly ripe for one that had been there for over a hundred years.

Dad's mouth was clamped shut, probably holding his breath. Dean flipped the cap off the lighter fluid and shook it over the body, followed it with the salt. Then Dad pulled himself up out of the grave and reached down to help Dean.

The rain started falling harder, making the flames twitch, but because of the accelerant, the burning continued strong. They stayed and watched until the flashlight beam caught curls of smoke mixed with rain, and the thing in the coffin was nothing but a charred mess.

It was a good bet the disturbance of the grave would be all over the local news within a day or so. Folks would, of course, be horrified and up in arms, but hopefully the job would be done and this place would be nothing but a bad memory in the taillights by the time the caretaker discovered it.

* * *

Neither of them spoke during the ride back in Dad's truck. The headlights caught the scratches on the Impala's hood, _they are mine_ , then the side of the house a moment later. They'd left the lights on, either because they were in such a hurry to get to the cemetery, or because they'd both wanted the comfort when they returned.

The moment they stepped through the front door, the air of the house felt different, humming with an unseen energy. So the ghost had bonded to the very brick and wood, giving up any ties to the body that had once been his. The darkness outside the lamps' glow seemed to roil if you weren't looking right at it. If you did, it was ordinary darkness.

Dean wondered if the house would be in one piece by the morning. Or if they would be.

"Salt guns," Dad said, his breath misting in the unnaturally cold air. "Living room. Now."

The back of Dean's neck itched as he followed his father. Dean already had the revolver, loaded with silver-tipped bullets, tucked in the back of his jeans when they'd left to do the burning. He picked up one shotgun, Dad the other, and Dad put his flashlight into the pocket of his jacket.

The rest of what they needed was already prepared and waiting in the empty room with the brick fireplace.

That weird hissing noise seemed louder. Dean thought he saw a shadow flicker in a corner of the room, but when he turned, there was nothing there.

As they strode down the hall towards the back of the house, shotguns slung over shoulders, it grew colder. Dean clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. The EMF was screeching; he finally switched it off and put it in the pocket of his jacket. Right then, an EMF meter was pretty much redundant.

There was a sharp crack. From where, Dean couldn't tell.

"Dean, look out!" Dad suddenly spun back towards him, grabbed his shoulders, and shoved him down, just as the glass frame over a printed detail of the internal guts of a jet engine exploded outward. Chunks of glass pattered to the wood floor.

Then Dad was pulling him up again, hurrying him along the hall. When they went past the den, dark stains began to form near the moldings of the hall ceiling and started to ooze downwards.

"You've got to be kidding me." Dean stopped to stare, tilting his head back to watch as the substance started to drip down the wall. "You have got to be kidding me!" He almost wanted to laugh. It was the best haunted-house cliché ever, and he'd never heard of, or seen, a ghost actually doing it.

The walls were bleeding.

A heavy hand on his shoulder reminded Dean to keep his focus on the business at hand. They kept going until they got to the room, and found the door was shut tight. Since they'd arrived, they hadn't seen it shut, not once.

Dad jiggled the knob and shoved, but the door wouldn't budge. "Dean, could you?" He stepped aside, hand gesturing.

"On it." Dean grinned. He took a few steps back, and let fly with a kick. The door smacked open.

They moved into the room and found that the air had turned the temperature of a meat locker. On the floor were two circles, one a combination of salt and markings made in white paint, the other one made up only of markings, and incomplete, the work Dad had done early that day. The only light in the room was what streamed in from the hall. A shape flickered into form immediately, rising up between Dean and his father, a figure tall and pale, face hungry.

One long arm shot out, skinny fingers closing around Dad's neck, and suddenly, Dad was up against the wall, feet off the ground, face turning red as he struggled, shotgun dangling.

"They were mine," the tall figure rasped, flickering in and out of transparency, a signal that couldn't quite tune in.

Dean's shotgun was already cocked and at his shoulder. He pulled the trigger, and when the spirit flew back across the room as if smacked by a two-ton silver bullet, and vanished, it was one of the most satisfying things he'd ever seen.

As Dad slumped forward, gasping for breath, falling to his knees, Dean let go of the shotgun with one hand, hooked his arm under Dad's, and pulled him into the circle of salt and signs.

"It worked," Dean said, as Dad leaned against him. "Holy shit. Did you see that?"

Still trying to catch his breath, with his fingers digging into Dean's arm, Dad pulled himself to his feet and brought his shotgun up to his shoulder. They stood back to back inside the circle, waiting.

The dark figure appeared again over by the fireplace, glaring at them with a century of fury and denied satisfaction. Dean cocked his shotgun, but Dad nudged him with his elbow, _No, wait._

Aloud, Dad muttered, "You remember what to do?"

When Dean nodded, Dad deliberately stepped outside the salt circle, in one long stride planting his feet on the half-finished circle of white painted symbols. "You want a piece of me?" he said to the figure flickering against the bricks. "You want to try and take what's mine?"

The burning eyes moved from Dad to Dean, but Dad twitched his shotgun to get the ghost's attention back to him. "Uh-uh. Won't work. You can't cross that salt; not anymore. So. I'm right here." Inside the half-circle, Dad shrugged.

Dean steadied the gun more firmly against his shoulder with his right hand while the fingers of his left hand reached into the pocket of his damp jacket. He touched the cool metal canister he'd put there earlier, then clenched his fingers around it, waiting, running through Dad's instructions in his mind yet again.

"Take your best shot," Dad challenged.

With a roar, the ghost surged forward.

"Now, Dean!"

A few frantic shakes, and the spray paint can was primed. As the ghost plowed into Dad within the circle, Dean stepped forward, pressed the nozzle of paint can down, and completed the curve of the last symbol. The circle was finally closed.

Throwing away the paint can, Dean raised the shotgun, and fired. The ghost kicked back with the same force as before, only this time it had nowhere to go. It looked a bit like a bug smacking against the windshield, except it disappeared instead of going splat.

Knocked almost over to the door, Dad lay on his back, eyes closed. Going against every order Dad had reiterated several times that afternoon, Dean stepped outside the salt-and-symbol circle and hurried over to his father. The ghost hadn't rematerialized yet, but if it did, Dean had the salt gun.

 _Shit. Oh shit. Please, Dad._

Grabbing the soft cloth of Dad's flannel shirt, Dean and tugged hard, dragging him across the floor. Then he heaved Dad onto his feet to get him into the first circle without breaking the salt line.

"'m okay,' Dad mumbled. "I'm okay," he said, voice growing stronger.

The ghost reappeared within the larger circle, turning towards them with cruel intent, mouth open and the knife gleaming -- and jerked to a stop as it reached the edge of the markings. The confused expression on its face was almost funny.

"Oh, I don't think so," Dad said.

It tried again in another direction, and again, but it couldn't break through the circle. The spirit put its head back and let out a howl of frustration that rattled the glass in the windows, sent a wind gusting through the room.

There was a faded, creased piece of paper in Dad's hand -- Dean recognized it as one of the sheets that had been clipped into Dad's journal as far back as he could remember. An old ritual; he had no idea where Dad had gotten it. The edges of the paper fluttering, Dad began to chant in Latin, his voice rising in volume as the spirit began to shriek.

Bursting into a heatless flame, the ghost swirled into a pale dust that glimmered in the light streaming in from the hall, and was gone.

An unsteady peace descended over the room, startling after what had happened. The air grew still, and several degrees warmer; the weird hiss was gone.

Dad signaled for Dean to stay within the salt circle. They waited about five minutes, listening and watching, until finally Dad nodded, and it was over.

* * *

Arms folded across his chest to ward off the chill in the pre dawn air and the aches in his muscles, Dean watched Dad carry the cracked, black and white monitor over to the trash bins that nestled against the side of Jerry's house. Dad set it down, turned his back on the house, and headed back towards Dean. He brushed his hands together as if he were wiping off more than mortar dust.

"So, we heading north?" Dean asked. "Goblins?"

"Goblins," Dad said. "We'll make a pit stop to get the Impala cleaned up along the way. Take a day to rest and clean ourselves up, too." Dad shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, looked out in the direction of the road. "This isn't the life I wanted for Sam." His hand twitched, and Dean heard the jangle of keys. Up in the trees a few crows settled, dark wings fluttering. "Or for you. Hunting's a rough life, and I worry sometimes that it's all you know how to do. I had a college fund for you, a fund for Sam. I had all these plans..."

"Dad, I _enjoy_ hunting." Dean unfolded himself, the raw ache in his father's voice making him want to jump out of his skin, go shoot evil things, drive eighty miles an hour and not look back. "And you know I was never into the whole school thing."

"Yeah, I know." He smiled, the first real smile Dean had seen on him in weeks. "You're a good hunter. To be a good hunter, you have to be smart. You learn fast, you're intelligent." Then the smile faded. "And you boys, both of you, could have more than this." Dad lowered his head, and the next words were almost whispered. "Mary would want you both to have more than this."

Dean swallowed and dug the sole of his boot into the gravel, down to the damp dirt beneath. He thought of how much easier, how different, the past forty-eight hours would have been with Sam there. Taking a deep breath, Dean caught the sweet tang of wood fires burning miles away. "Mom would want Sam to be at Stanford," he said.

Turning, Dad headed for the porch. He stopped with one foot on the first step, fingers around the newel post. "Doesn't change the way things are. He's safer here with us." He continued up the steps.

Instead of following him, Dean headed for the Impala.

"Where are you going?" Dad said from the porch, not a challenge, not now. He sounded puzzled.

"I'll be right back." Dean opened the driver's-side door, the creak loud in the quiet. "Got something I need to do."

* * *

The ground was wet from last night's rain, mud sticking to his boots. Dean finished sprinkling the salt and sat on one of the big swings, letting it sway him back and forth a little. It was just shy of dawn, the metal and wood of the playground equipment slick with moisture, the chain of the swing cold under his touch.

When he dialed Sam's cell, Sam answered right away, even though it had to be six-thirty in the morning in California. "Dean?"

"Yeah. Hey, Sam."

"You guys all right?" His voice sounded alert but rough around the edges; Dean wondered if he'd slept at all last night.

"We're fine." Dean stopped swinging. "We're both fine. Job's done."

"So...where you guys headed next?"

"Not sure. Dad said something about a goblin sighting in Maine."

"Oh. Sounds like fun." Sam's voice was flat.

"Sure, it'll be a blast," Dean said, a bit too heartily.

"Well...I guess I'd better..."

"Take care of yourself," Dean said.

"You too."

Dean hit the "end call" button and put the cell away. Then he went to work completing the cleansing ritual.

* * *

So what if his den was trashed, the ceiling would require major repair, there was salt and weird marks in white paint all over the floors, the scent of burnt things in every room, and he still had to talk the contractors into coming back to finish their jobs.

"You're sure?" Jerry poured more coffee into John's half-empty mug without waiting for him to ask.

"There's no way to be absolutely sure. Here." John shifted in his chair, dug into the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out a card. Not much was printed on it, just the name "John Winchester," and a phone number. He handed it to Jerry.

Jerry held the card at the corners, staring at it. "I thought you said your name was Harrison?"

"We didn't know you yet," John said. He took a swallow of coffee, the mug hiding what might have been a smile. "If your...problem...stirs again, you call me. We'll come back."

"But is the ghost...where is it? Where did it go?" Jerry thought he'd go dig up a few books on the subject next chance he got. There really were more things in heaven and earth, and all his life when he'd been presented with something new and inexplicable, his approach had been to take it apart and poke around inside, until it became explicable.

John shook his head, taking a slow sip of coffee. "To be honest, I have no idea. Important thing is, it's no longer _here_."

"Okay," Jerry said, not understanding at all, but the explanation was enough for now.

There seemed no way to do this that wasn't awkward, so Jerry just dropped the white envelope onto the table.

Picking it up, John opened the flap, then thumbed through the cash inside, expression as locked as it would be if they were in the thick of a poker game. "It's too much." He put the envelope back on the table, tucking the flap back in with great care.

"To replace the equipment you lost defending my place. That gadgetry can't have been cheap."

After a long moment, John said, "All right," and took the envelope again, folded it in half, and tucked it in his back pocket.

The telltale click of the back door opening sounded, and then Dean walked in. Hunched in his leather jacket, he looked a lot more worn down than he had when he and his father first appeared on Jerry's doorstep, the movie-star confidence folded into something more dark and muted. It seemed impossible it had only been two days ago.

"You two look pretty beat up. There's aspirin in my medicine cabinet." Jerry turned his coffee mug, groping for the right words. "Can I take you guys out to breakfast?" Offering them a small wad of cash, aspirin, and a hot meal hardly seemed adequate, but it was about all he had.

Dean and John exchanged glances, and then John got up from the table, chair going back with a scrape. "We got to hit the road. Appreciate the offer, though."

"You sure?" They weren't swaying on their feet, not yet; they seemed darned close to it, though.

"Got more work to do," Dean said, and gave Jerry a grin that made him look as young as he really was.

"Thank you," Jerry said, and shook hands with them one more time before they gathered up their duffel bags and equipment, and left.

Standing alone in his kitchen, Jerry heard the front door close behind them, and his home was returned to him.

Jerry hadn't thought there were actual people in the world like John and Dean Winchester. Big Guy and The Kid. You heard about them sometimes, you read about them in a book or watched them in a movie or on TV, but they didn't show up in the flesh, with dark circles under their eyes, scars on their hands and at the corners of their faces, with bags of herbs and salt and old newspaper clippings.

But he'd thought ghosts weren't real, too.

Yeah. More things in heaven and earth.

Jerry picked up the phone and sat down at the kitchen table. Then he dialed his son's number.

~end

  
  
\+ The title was inspired by the poem [My November Guest](http://www.bartelby.com/117/3.html) by Robert Frost. Joan Aiken also wrote a ghost story called _The Shadow Guests_ , and of course there's Edward Gorey's _The Doubtful Guest_.  
+Research and info on ghost hunting techniques and equipment came from a variety of sources, with the main starting point the links in [](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/profile)[**researchgrrrl**](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/) 's [awesome meta post](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/53683.html).  
+Episodes of [Ghost Hunters](http://www.scifi.com/ghosthunters/) were helpful and chock full of ideas, as well as addictive (and if someone in this fandom does finally write that crossover, please give me the link? Because, bwee!)  
+Background for Jerry pieced together based on rewatching "Phantom Traveler," the tv.com [recap](http://www.tv.com/supernatural/phantom-traveler/episode/465117/recap.html), and the twiz tv [episode transcript](http://www.twiztv.com/cgi-bin/transcript.cgi?episode=http://dmca.free.fr/scripts/supernatural/season1/supernatural-104.htm).  
+according to [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kittanning,_Pennsylvania), the playground in Kittanning really was a former cemetery.

  
[Part 1](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/94932.html)   
[Part 2](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/95194.html)   
[Part 3](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/95297.html)


End file.
